TEXAS, HOUSTON: RICE UNIVERSITY AND THE HOUSTON ZOO

November 29, 2021

Since we were flying home out of Houston, we spent our last day of our Southern Texas trip there and managed to cram quite a bit in.

We began the day with a drive-by visit to Rice University. The average GPA for admission to this elite private school is 4.12. It has an acceptance rate of 8-10% and an impressive graduation rate of 95%, which I would guess is due in part to the 6:1 student-faculty ratio. About 7,200 students attend Rice, with about 55% of those being undergrads and 45% being grad students. Tuition is $51,000+ for undergrads.

In his travel agenda for our trip, Bob noted that every incoming freshman is placed in one of Rice's eleven residential colleges, somewhat like Hogwarts houses, where they live, dine, and socialize. 

Less than a mile away from Rice is the Houston Zoo, a 55-acre park with over 600 species of animals. It is relatively small in comparison to zoos like New York City's Bronx Zoo (265 acres), the National Zoo in Washington D.C. (163 acres), or the San Diego Zoo (100 acres), but Wikipedia says it is the second most visited zoo in the United States, or at least it was in 2017.

Cute door handles. (Can you see Bob in the reflection?)

They already had Christmas decorations up, which added some festivity to our visit:

NEW YORK CITY: BOWERY HOTEL AND BRONX ZOO

July 21, 2021

I hope to take a trip to New York City at least once a year to visit our son who lives there.  There is so much to see, and I love the city vibe. Our time this year, however, was mostly spent in Upstate New York. But more about that later.

We took our usual mode of transportation--a red-eye flight from LAX to JFK, arriving at 6:30 AM. I could definitely relate to the "never sleeps" part of the sign that greeted us as we deplaned.

My watch said I got over three hours of sleep, but some of that "light" sleep time was just "holding-very-still-but-still-awake" time.  I don't think I got more than two hours of sleep.

Luckily we were able to check into our hotel as soon as we got there, which was around 7:30 AM?. We stayed at the Hotel 50 Bowery in Lower Manhattan, just outside Chinatown. The hotel is snuggly nestled between a Chinese restaurant and a neo-Classic HSBC Bank.

We were really pleased with our choice.  It can be hit-and-miss in NYC if you aren't staying in an expensive hotel.  This was a hit! The service was great and our room was large (for NYC), clean, well-appointed, and had a great view of morning yoga on the deck below us. We will stay here again.

SOUTHERN OREGON, DAY 3: WILDLIFE SAFARI IN WINSTON

 September 5, 2020

Just 70 miles from Bandon and its West Coast Safari Park, down a long, winding two-lane road, we discovered, quite by accident, the Wildlife Safari in Winston. How these two animal parks can exist in such out-of-the-way places and so relatively close to each other is a mystery to me. 

We were on our way to our hotel in Sutherlin but had taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up going through Winston, where we noticed the signs for the Wildlife Safari. Curious, we turned in at the sign and drove up the road for a bit.

It was just before dusk, a good time to see wildlife. We slowed down when a doe ran across the road in front of our car, and it was a good thing we did, because not far behind was her sweet little fawn.

A little further up the road we came across a flock of wild turkeys.

We thought these two sightings boded well for the park, which was already closed, but we determined to come back the following morning when it opened.

SOUTHERN OREGON, DAY 2: WEST COAST GAME PARK SAFARI IN BANDON

Friday, September 4, 2020

We drove past the West Coast Game Park Safari in Bandon, Oregon, on our way to our hotel. We were still in the "wandering mode," so I suggested that we wander through the game park. It isn't a big place--just 75 species on exhibit in a park covering 21 acres. It has been open since 1968 and gets about 60,000 visitors a year.

The small gift shop that doubled as a ticket office had some intriguing t-shirts and decor.

It took us about an hour to walk through the park. We saw a few kangaroos.

MEXICO CITY: PASEO DE LA REFORMA AND CHAPULTEPEC PARK

March 11, 2018

I had eaten a large plate of rich, spicy mole, and I had about the worst case of acid reflux I had ever had that night. I was up until 3:00 AM, at which point I finally took two Benadryl just to get some sleep. That totally knocked me out until after 9:00 AM, so we got a late start. We left the hotel around 10:00 and headed for Paseo de la Reforma. 

The Paseo de la Reforma, or the "Promenade of Reform" is a very wide divided street modeled after the great boulevards of Europe, such as the Champs-Élyseés in Paris or the Paseo del Prado in Madrid. It was designed and built in the 1860s to link Emperor Maximilian's castle to the city center. 

Today it is the hub of the downtown business area and home to most of the city's tallest skyscrapers.

Photo from here

Our goal was to walk along the Paseo de la Reforma to Chapultepec Park (where Maximilian had his castle), about 1.75 miles from our hotel, 

In the aerial photo at the top of this post, you can see that the Paseo splits around a monument. I remember this monument well from my first visit to Mexico City with my mom in 1978. We could see it from our hotel room window. It is known locally as El Angel, and more formally as The Angel of Independence. It was built in 1910 during the presidency of Porfirio Diaz to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Mexico's War of Independence. 

WEST TEXAS, EL PASO: THE WALL, THE ZOO, AND ST. PATRICK'S CHURCH

December 30, 2018

We spent our last day-and-a-half in West Texas in El Paso, population 681,728, the 22nd largest city in the United States. It is just across the border from Ciudad Juárez, which is about twice its size.

We returned to El Paso from the wilderness (aka Big Bend National Park and Marfa) in the early afternoon with just enough time to squeeze in a few sights before the night fell.

BORDER WALL

With El Paso and Ciudad Juárez separated by what is not much more than a creek, the border wall is a prominent feature in the city. Some kind of wall has been here for decades. We had a great view of the El Paso border wall from the freeway that runs alongside it. It was interesting to look at this and think of all the political turmoil it has caused over the years, and then to think back on the open border in Big Bend National Park.

EL PASO ZOO
Our first stop was the El Paso Zoo, a small operation that covers just 35 acres and includes 220 species. In spite of its small size, however, we were impressed with its animal collection and enclosures.

Here are a few of my favorites. The Mexican gray wolf, which is extinct in the wild:

ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL: OUR LONGEST/SHORTEST VACATION EVER, PART 3 (THE JOURNEY HOME)

March 13-14, 2020

On Thursday night (March 12), after we had gone back to our hotel and gone to bed, my brother Dave was contacted by the Church's legal counsel in Argentina. He said the government had drafted a proposal that would call for an mandatory 14-day quarantine of visitors to Argentina from high risk countries: China, Japan, Iran, South Korea, all of Europe, and the United States. The proposal could be formalized at any time, meaning that we would be in quarantine, unable to travel and possibly unable to leave the country. He advised that we get back across the border into Brazil as soon as possible and that we catch a flight from there back to the United States.

Major bummer.

Dave shared this information with us at breakfast, and while we sat at the table together, the Joneses and we booked one-way flights for later that day that would take us home. At over $1,200 a ticket, it was an expensive decision, and we doubted that we would be able to recoup any of our losses on three other flights we would no longer be able to take--to Buenos Aires, to Patagonia, and back to the USA.

The disappointment was immense, but our decision would turn out to be the right one.

Our incredibly patient, tolerant driver agreed to take the four of us back to Brazil, and then drive back to the Argentina side of the border to take Dave and Bonnie to the airport to travel to Buenos Aires on the flight we were supposed to join them on.

We said a tearful good-bye to Dave and Bonnie, the three Kenison siblings in tears (it's genetic), grateful for the very short time spent together and mourning the lost shared experiences that should have been ours during the next few days. We would have a great story to tell, but we would rather have had the trip we had planned.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN: MILWAUKEE COUNTY ZOO

Years ago, my husband Bob would take off for continuing education programs and leave me stranded at home with three little children.  I was always very jealous that a) he got to get away without kids, and b) he could keep learning in his field. As an English major, I guess I could also "keep learning in my field," as long as I could find time to read with those three little kids around.

Anyway, one of the places he went several times was to a tax planning seminar at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  Until we spent a few hours in Wisconsin while on a trip to visit my sister in Minnesota in fall 2015, I had never been to Wisconsin. Well, last July, after years of not attending that seminar, Bob decided it was time to go again, and this time, I got to go along!

Bob flew to Wisconsin several days ahead of me, and I flew in shortly before his week-long seminar ended. I wandered around Madison during his final day or two of the seminar, and then we headed east to Milwaukee.

Here is the sum total of what I knew about Milwaukee: "Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous" was a popular slogan when I was a kid, and had it not been for that slogan I probably never would have heard of Milwaukee.  Oh yeah, and I had also heard of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, which I've always related to the Schlitz slogan.

Well, Milwaukee has a few things other than their beer (which we don't drink anyway) that are worth noting. I'll start with the Milwaukee Zoo, a 200-acre spread that boasts over 3,300 mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles that comprise 377 species. It began in 1892 as a mammal and bird display in the city park, and within a few years it grew to 800 animals housed on 23 acres of land. Over the next 100 or so years, it grew and grew and GREW until it reached the size it is today. In acreage, it is twice as large as the famous (at least to us Californians) San Diego Zoo, but it has only 10% of the animals and half the number of species that the San Diego Zoo boasts of.

Fewer animals on more land--that's what we liked about this zoo.

The sleek impala looked happy on this lot:

ALASKA! A MUSK OX FARM AND A REINDEER RANCH

My husband is a wildlife lover extraordinaire, and Alaska is certainly the place to see wildlife, but he wasn't content with seeing animals in the wild. No, he had to scout out every specialty farm and preserve. I was a little bit worried about OD-ing on animals on this trip, but for the most part, what we saw was unique and entertaining, starting with a musk ox farm and a reindeer ranch.

The Musk Ox Farm is in the Palmer/Wasilla area, about 45 minutes from Anchorage.

The farm is a non-profit organization that is funded partly by tourist dollars and partly by selling muskox wool, called qiviut. Qiviut is eight times warmer than sheep's wool by weight and softer than cashmere, but boy-oh-boy is it expensive.  A single skein (1 oz./200 yards) sells for $95.00. 

A male musk ox sheds 4-7 pounds of qiviut per season. I suppose if I had to brush one of these beasts, I'd charge $95.00/skein too.

For a more reasonable price of $11.00 each, we took a 45 minute tour of the farm, which has about 80 musk oxen, the largest captive herd in the world.

The musk ox is one of the oldest living species and was once a contemporary of the woolly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger. The goal of the farm is to domesticate these animals. It takes multiple generations to build a domesticated herd, and they've been at it since the 1950s.